


fetch the bolt cutters

by paradox_n_bedrock



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Blood, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Light Angst, Post-Part 3, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Witches Longing For Tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradox_n_bedrock/pseuds/paradox_n_bedrock
Summary: “Can’t you tell? It’s over. The Dark Lord is no more,” she says it simply, as if something so impossible was a mere fact of life. The grass is green, the sky is blue, the Dark Lord is gone. She can’t quite comprehend it enough to ask how before Lilith’s gaze turns piercing. "You still pray to me. Almost more than you ever did before. You worship Hecate, you came here to do so, but it's my name on your lips when you wake."--Five times (five separate verses) in which Zelda sees Lilith after Lucifer is defeated, and one time Lilith sees Zelda.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman & Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 28
Kudos: 79
Collections: Madam Spellman May





	fetch the bolt cutters

**Author's Note:**

> For Madam Spellman May, Week 4: Worship.  
> Thanks to muscatmusic18 (themoon-andher-love on Tumblr) for doing a lovely job beta reading.

When Zelda arrives, Lilith is already at the clearing where they make their offerings to Hecate, clad in an elaborately beaded gown of such a deep burgundy that it’s nearly black. She tilts her face to the dappled sun streaming in through the foliage, and when the crisp autumn wind picks up, rifling through Lilith’s hair and sending orange leaves tumbling across the ground, Zelda shivers, surely from the chill and not the deceptive peace of Lilith’s appearance.

She can’t summon surprise over seeing her, but anger sparks bright and burns out just as quickly. She wants to be furious, to blame Lilith for neglecting the coven, to still feel justified in refusing her asylum all those months ago.

Instead, she just feels empty.

There isn’t much left after all they’d lost in the violent game of chess against Faustus and the insidious terrors he’d brought upon them. All _she_ had lost. The sorrow of a bitter victory chokes her at the most inopportune moments and if there is any hint of relief to see Lilith alive and mostly whole, she dismisses it as the reluctance to see another powerful witch laid low by a man. 

When Lilith finally turns to her, she decides the churning in her stomach is sympathy, not remorse, because there is no blood on her hands.

And Lilith is indeed bloody, it sits drying rust-colored and starting to flake where it had been spilled, a swath of it down her face, across her chest and arms. 

She looks exhausted, so exhausted that were she anyone else, Zelda would expect her to be swaying on her feet, but when their eyes meet she catches an edge of exhilaration to her expression. It’s intriguing, something Zelda only witnessed a brief glimpse of over the few hours they spent plotting against Lucifer the previous winter.

“Lilith,” she breathes.

She does sway then, and Zelda’s feet carry her across the clearing, rustling through the fallen leaves. She hovers, hands outstretched, waiting to be rebuffed.

“ _Now_ you want to help me?” Lilith says, but it’s as amused as it is biting.

“What’s happened?”

“Can’t you tell? It’s _over._ The Dark Lord is no more,” she says it simply, as if something so impossible was a mere fact of life. _The grass is green, the sky is blue, the Dark Lord is gone._ She can’t quite comprehend it enough to ask how before Lilith’s gaze turns piercing. "You still pray to me. Almost more than you ever did before. You worship Hecate, you came here to do so, but it's my name on your lips when you wake."

She raises her chin, despite the hiss of _now she listens_ that wants to escape. "Maybe I was praying for you."

"After you sent me away to my death? Whyever would you do that?” 

A comment about Lilith’s obvious survival sits on her tongue, but she can’t utter it when the cost of that survival is visible in the slight swell of her belly. There’s no answer that feels enough like the truth and no lie that she is prepared to tell, so she says, “Let me help you now.”

Lilith rolls her eyes, but it’s half-hearted at best, and Zelda grasps her hands, holding them as she says the words, taking them both to the mortuary. The house should be empty, but she lands them outside the master bath regardless, waves Lilith in ahead of her, and grabs two cloths and a bath towel from the linen closet. She’s always hated operating without a plan, even if she often tosses it, and she finds herself trying to calculate the distant odds that Lilith will remain long enough to use the towel.

When she enters, Lilith is clutching the sink, examining in the mirror a gash curving her forehead down towards her temple, and Zelda steps up next to her, turning on the water.

“It will heal,” she says, half a question, knowing her form is more than a mere glamour.

“It will,” Lilith repeats, but looks as though she’s mourning something greater than her unmarred skin.

She tests the water’s temperature and wets the cloth, slowly raising it to press against Lilith’s face. She lets the warmth sink in and when Lilith turns from the mirror, she swipes at the blood, already knowing this isn’t going to get her clean. But she cups her chin and dabs at Lilith’s forehead, careful around the cut. Wipes down her cheek and jaw. They’re close enough to be sharing the same air and Zelda fixes her attention on each patch of skin as it’s revealed.

She gets to her neck and pauses, the weight of what she’s looking at heavy enough that she nearly recoils. Lilith’s graceful throat is encircled by a web of glass beads, oversized jewels, and delicate chain, and it gives the effect of nothing less than an ornate, ostentatious collar. “May I remove _this?_ ” The disgust spills out harsher than she intends, but Lilith is already reaching for it, face contorted into a wordless snarl. She rips it one-handed from her neck, raining sparkling garnet into the sink.

She realizes then exactly how much skin Lilith has on display in her dark gown, its neckline dipping low over her chest to frame the intricate choker, and muffles a sense memory of pale yellow satin and her own exposed shoulders.

Lilith is already reaching for the zipper and Zelda contemplates leaving, knowing she herself wouldn’t want to be seen in such a state, but Lilith is heedless of her company. 

Perhaps it’s time she had a witness, if that’s what she wishes. She meets Lilith’s eyes once more and peels the heavy garment from her skin, easing it over her shoulders and down her body, tossing it into the corner when Lilith steps free. 

She kneels and hears a soft gasp, but sets about unbuckling the strap of Lilith’s heel, guiding her foot out of one and then the other, trying not to dwell on painted toes flexing against the cold tile.

When she’s done, she can’t help but glance up, and Lilith is the vision of a vengeful goddess: sharp-eyed, bloody and victorious, riotous curls cascading everywhere and for one blinding moment, she wants to stay there, on her knees before what must be the False God’s most glorious creation.

And then she thinks of silence in her time of need, and of shocked, fearful eyes at her own rejection, and she’s clearing her throat, pulling back from the moment before she finds herself too weak to do so. “I’ll draw a bath, shall I?”

There’s a slow dawning of bewilderment on Lilith’s face, but Zelda busies herself with the tap. She wishes she’d been forward enough to do this earlier, because now there’s the waiting, and the quiet minutes while the bathtub fills and Lilith shifts restlessly in her peripheral vision are far more unsettling than undressing her. She rolls her sleeves and ends up mixing in a bubble bath Hilda made just to keep moving. 

The tub is only half full when Lilith steps into it, having shed the rest of her garments. Zelda tenses at the sudden proximity, but Lilith’s arched eyebrow as she sinks into the foam feels like a challenge, so she lathers a cloth and starts with Lilith’s near hand, despite bathing her not being in any version of the interactions she had imagined. 

At first, she’s overly aware of the sound of rushing water, the stark bathroom lighting, and Lilith’s forced nonchalance, but it’s surprisingly easy to still her mind as she glides up her arm. The light freckles she finds are charming somehow, though she doubts they’re there through any action of Lilith’s own. She has to lean to reach her other arm, and Lilith barely makes it easier, brightening with humor as Zelda refrains from asking her to move. It’s no better with her attention back on the line of Lilith’s neck, the nearness uncomfortably intimate. She’s finding no other injuries and considers that the spatter she’s erasing, soon to be washed down the drain, might be all that remains of their former Dark Lord.

She turns off the water and keeps her touch light as she washes her, and though she doesn’t linger, it remains anything but clinical. She wonders why Lilith is tolerating these liberties, tries to pick apart the stiffness of her motions as she twists her hair out of the way for Zelda to attend to her back. It reveals the blood matted into her brown locks as well, and Zelda sighs with the annoyance of having done everything in the least efficient order.

“Dip your head,” she murmurs when she's finished, and Lilith listens, sliding all the way under and scrubbing at her face far more rigorously than Zelda had. The water pinkens further underneath the film of dwindling bubbles and when she comes up looking raccoonish, Zelda passes her the facecloth to finish removing her makeup. Her overdrawn lips and filled-in brows are stripped away and the nakedness makes _Zelda_ feel oddly vulnerable to be looking upon it. 

She fills her palm with a generous amount of shampoo and works it into Lilith’s hair. It’s been years since she’s washed someone else’s hair, and Sabrina’s fine blonde strands were nothing like this thick curtain of chestnut. It’s strange, to bury her fingers in it and have the First Witch only wind tighter under her hands, so she slows, circling the pads of her fingers against her scalp, some impulse driving her to attempt to soothe the tension away, as she rubs from the nape of her neck up to her temples. 

It’s not until she’s letting conditioner soak in that it has any effect. Lilith relaxes in increments, her shoulders loosening and her head starting to loll with Zelda’s motions, as her hands comb through more hair than any person has a right to have. 

In the silence it begins to feel like meditation, like care, like worship in a way more personal than she’s ever been able to touch. She’s not praying with words, but there’s a hum in her chest that she hasn’t felt in centuries and it’s settling the dread and uncertainty that’s been plaguing her since well before she saw her own suffering reflected in Lilith and looked away.

She rinses Lilith’s hair the final time using a pitcher, nails grazing her scalp as she runs her fingers through on their last passes, and it’s that that breaks the fragile spell.

Lilith makes a sound, unsure and strained, and she’s pulling away before Zelda has fully registered that it was one of enjoyment. The change spikes panic in Zelda, and she takes her hands back to keep from clutching at her. She’s not ready for this to be over, for Lilith to bid her farewell when she’s finally doing something right. It tears the words free, though they come out short and leave a bitter taste, “I should have done things differently."

“It’s too late for that,” Lilith says, tossing her head as she stands, water sloughing down her body.

 _Does it have to be?_ she wonders, but that's too pathetic a thought to utter, so she wraps Lilith in the soft towel she almost hadn’t brought, tucking it around her, and doesn’t apologize and doesn’t linger.

She leaves the room feeling bereft, as though she’s been denied something precious, and knows she’ll keep waking haunted by her prayer to Lilith.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think and find me on Tumblr [here](https://paradox-n-bedrock.tumblr.com/post/619756531125223425/ive-been-in-here-too-long-paradoxnbedrock) <3


End file.
